Symphony for Strings No. 4, in F Major
William Boyce (1711-1779)
It is usually claimed that native English composers began to be pushed into the background after the death of Henry Purcell in 1695, forced to compete with an increasing flood of styles and significant figures from the continent, as was notably the case with Handel, who lived the last 45 years of his life in London, quite overshadowing his English contemporaries. Nevertheless, there was vigourous activity on the part of local composers, especially in the field of church music, and to some extent English-language theatre music. This was the case with William Boyce, whose early work has admired by Handel himself, and who became a distinguished composer of music for popular entertainments, incidental music for the stage, as well as anthems, odes and choral works of all sorts. In 1760 Boyce published a collection of eight “symphonys” for strings, actually movements taken, for the most part, from various works written for the theatre, brought together as miniature compositions in three movements which nicely sum up the wit and cheerful elegance of music favoured in mid-18th century
The Fourth Symphony is quite characteristic of these works: The movements are “binary” (two sections, each repeated), as in the brisk opening movement with its lively violin passages over a bounding “drum-bass” rhythmic character. The pastoral middle movement, in triple metre, brings to the fore the sound of the horns (always evocative of the countryside), the violins in a lilting, expressive songfulness. The final movement is a nimble, trotting movement of distinctly Handelian cast, again with the horns adding a rustic quality which to modern ears (filtered through Handel’s “Water Music”) seems to be the essence of musical “Englishness.”
NCO concert
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